In 1984, McNealy took over the CEO role from Khosla, who would ultimately leave the company in 1985. On April 24, 2006, McNealy stepped down as CEO after serving in that position for 22 years, and turned the job over to Jonathan Schwartz. McNealy is one of the few CEOs of a major corporation to have had a tenure of over twenty years.

Unlike most people who become involved in high technology industries, Scott McNealy did not come from the world of amateur programmers, hackers, and computer scientists. Instead, his background was in business, having earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Harvard and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to college, he graduated from Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where his father was in the automotive industry as the Vice Chairman of the American Motors Corporation; most of his work experience prior to joining Sun was in automotive manufacturing.[4][5]

According to the book The Decline and Fall of Nokia, Scott McNealy was the "dream candidate" to become CEO of Nokia in 2010.[6] However, McNealy said he was not offered the job.[7]

McNealy was born in Columbus, Indiana. He is married, and has four sons: Maverick, Dakota, Colt, and Scout. He is known to be an enthusiastic ice hockey player and has been ranked as one of the best golfers in executive ranks; McNealy has referred to himself as a "golf major" who wound up running a high-tech business.[8][9] McNealy graduated from the same secondary school as 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (Cranbrook School, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan), and supported him vocally and financially throughout his presidential campaign. He is the commissioner of the Alternative Golf Association (known as "Flogton").[10] He was the Co-Founder and Chairman of Wayin.

In 1999, Stephen Manes quoted McNealy as saying, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."[12] Manes criticized the statement in his Full Disclosure column: "He's right on the facts, wrong on the attitude. ... Instead of 'getting over it', citizens need to demand clear rules on privacy, security, and confidentiality."[12] The authors of Privacy in the 21st Century admitted, "While a shocking statement, there is an element of truth in it."[13]

McNealy was an early advocate of the networked environment; his company's motto was "The Network is the Computer". At times, he has been known to be skeptical of products that do not integrate well with networked environments. One example McNealy has given involved the AppleiPod. As quoted in The Register, McNealy said, "There’s a pendulum thing where stuff is on the client side and then goes back into the network where it belongs. The answering machine put voicemail by the desk, and then it went back into the network. Your iPod is like your home answering machine. I guarantee you it will be hard to sell an iPod five or seven years from now when every cell phone can access your entire music library wherever you are."[14]